SIUE’s Mares and Moffett: Climate Change and Crime Connected

December 1, 2015, 4:10 PM

Climatic Change, the foremost climate change specific journal, has published the research of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Dennis Mares and Ken Moffett regarding climate change and its relation to violence.

Their results show a roughly six percent worldwide increase in homicides for each degree Celsius warming. Their results also indicate poorer nations (especially in Africa, a nearly 18 percent increase) may get hit especially hard with increases in interpersonal violence whereas those increases are nominal in developed industrial nations.

“Such variation indicates that climate change may acutely increase violence in areas that already are affected by higher levels of homicides and other social dislocations,” Mares said.